Editorial: GOP meltdown

Unpopular President Bush is kept away from his party’s convention. Texas Republican Ron Paul holds a counter-convention of some 10,000 across town, reportedly with far-right ideologues like Grover “drown the government” Norquist in attendance. The Republican media machine churns out smoke and mirrors to try to prettify a hasty and highly problematic pick for vice president. The GOP’s far right wing can’t trust the GOP’s right wing.

But does America hear a constant drumbeat about a party divided?

Yet in Denver last week, when history was made – nominating the first African American as a major party’s candidate and giving living proof of a progressive shift in the country’s political landscape – all the corporate media could talk about was how Hillary Clinton supporters supposedly wouldn’t go with Barack Obama.

The GOP is in a meltdown, but its showcasers — those corporate and far-right ideologues who benefitted from the years of Republican ruthless rule — only cover it up.

The far right constantly accuses the media of having a “liberal” bias, of giving so much time and ink to Obama. Yet a Media Matters study found that 72 percent of all that “time and ink” was negative coverage of Obama.

The political winds are shifting away from the right, but the GOP is fighting with all its might to stop it, and the corporate media-meisters keep following the GOP script. Instead of asking the deep questions, challenging the Bush/McCain/Rove spin and informing the public on the substantive issues, they parrot that very spin.

Fortunately, the corpor-ate/right-wing crowd hasn’t gotten control over the Internet and independent media, though they’ve tried.

When McCain announced Sarah Palin’s selection, the corporate media went ga-ga. All you could read was the Karl Rove line about what a bold move it was and how it would play big with Hillary supporters. It took independent bloggers to start turning over the rocks and getting the Palin-ultra-right worms to crawl out into the light of day.

The GOP meltdown may be just as dangerous as the polar ice cap meltdown. As this reckless, power-hungry reactionary cabal feels its power slipping away, watch out for the October Surprise and its necessary far-right hype. And the corporate media will surely be there helping.